


(I HOPE WE WON'T BE) FRIENDS FOREVER

by Anonymous



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Biting, Blood, Divorce fever, F/F, Friends To Lovers But Rose Wishes It Was Enemies To Lovers, Not Epilogue Compliant, Resolved Sexual Tension, Resolving Your Longstanding Crushes As A Form Of Contact Sport, Trans Jade Harley, Trans Rose Lalonde, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:54:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27030763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: You raise your chin, meet Rose’s all-consuming gaze head-on, and gather up the months of quiet willpower it’s taken you to stand up for yourself.“I’ll tell you if you tell me.”
Relationships: Jade Harley/Rose Lalonde
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24
Collections: Anonymous





	(I HOPE WE WON'T BE) FRIENDS FOREVER

The morning after Rose’s birthday is an inexorable, cloudless one. Torrents of light scorch the festivity off the streamers strewn on the floor. Without Dave here to threaten kicking “a hundred-yard three-pointer GOATest-of-all-time punting to rival Tom Brady’s greatest hits”, the deflated balloons are just garbage. Lifetimes ago, your Grandpa would’ve saved the near-empty bottles of vodka, _all in good hunting, my girl - at worst, it’ll be a reliquary for the night’s memories!_ You became a ghost in your own too-large house, as signs of your habitation lost ground to cadaverous clutter you never had the heart to throw out. You grab a black garbage bag. You have the heart now.

It took you some time to realize most people don’t feel a soft heartache while doing household chores. In fact, some of your friends don’t do them at all, which is why Strider and his covalent bond of a boyfriend are not invited to participate in party-planning. Kanaya, your aspectmate, blessed with a talent for being meticulously perfect at everything ever, often takes the helm. Rose’s grand ideas ensure every birthday is unique and memorable; Jane’s pragmatic temper ensures no one dies in the process. And you. You don’t allow yourself the narcissism of imagining your efforts as “key”. But you do know how to live in the moment. Your dancing gets the stuffiest of attendees to loosen up, even as you excuse yourself hourly to touch up your makeup. Others can get blackout drunk. Not you.

You often get stuck with the cleanup.

Which is why you’re grateful Rose is here. She only ever shows up to help after her own birthday parties, like she feels that she has to one-up the audacity of a celebration in her name. Or like she feels guilty about sticking you with the bill. Or like... Like a million billion judgements you’ve been making an effort not to pass on your friends anymore! So you resolve to be grateful Rose is here, sporting a practical T-shirt and a heavy palette of “bare minimum” eyeshadow, and giving you an excuse to tie this bag in a knot and take the day’s first break.

“Beautiful morning,” she notes, as you pour water into the kettle. For a pair as odd as you, you share a few bizarre similarities. A predilection for tea, for example, though Rose favors a double strength Earl Grey whose pestilence makes you wonder why she doesn’t switch to coffee. You’re both morning people, too, not by nature but thanks to conscious efforts to rid yourselves of your recalcitrant teenage sleep schedules.

“I’m never gonna wish for less sun, but right now I do wish I had less windows.”

“Ah. Pardon me for not congeniating. It would be incongruous if one with my title were easily wounded by the Light,” which is Rose’s roundabout way of saying she’s not hung over because she doesn’t drink. You place the kettle on the stove and find your interlocutor leaning her right leg and two-thirds of her left over the kitchen island chair.

“Oh, please, sit.”

“I am sitting.”

You grin and cross your legs atop the opposite seat without a retort. At least your gay sitting is comfortable.

“Had fun last night?”

“Yes, it’s nice to get the gang together, or as much of the gang as will come anyhow. Even if musically induced hearing loss makes sustained conversation impossible.”

“Alright, for your next birthday we’ll do a book club. Arrange some chairs in a circle, very straight-backed. Maybe we can play some Mozart?”

“Please, no, I have trouble enough getting out of the house. I’d not like to stumble into a Polanski-directed parody of my living room.”

“Yeah, but would you have more fun just chatting than partying?”

“Some fun has to be earned, or learned.”

“I can’t say I get it, but hey, it’s your birthday,” you rib an impassive Rose. The kettle whistles. You rise to pour your guest’s nightmare brew and the sweet citrus tea you take in the mornings. Teasing is automatic between you two, but you do understand the sentiment. Party nights are an exercise in arithmetics: how much alcohol can you put in your system without sacrificing your alertness?

“Allow me to illustrate. You appear to have the best time out of all our acquaintances at any given party, and yet, they’re the ones who drink themselves unconscious. The life of the party must live until the death of the party.”

It’s like she can read your mind. Seer of Truths, hobbyist psychiatrist. By her own admission, Freud is a sham. You're the genuine article; you're the one with the kind eyes and the reassuring smile, herding cats to their apotheosis. And now one cat has returned to your kitchen, to lap up the tea you made. If she has such a handle on emotion, can’t she be a little less fucking scathing?

Summer beats against the windows. The tea you cradle in your hands is boiling. But you’re freezing inside. Maybe it's just that absurd urge you feel sometimes to grow larger than the house, larger than the planet and the universe and just eat it all. You placate your hunger with a sip of tea and burn your tongue.

"Fuck!"

"Hm?", Rose eyes you, as if she couldn't tell what just happened, and you answer, "burnt my tongue.” Since moving out of your ex-boyfriends’ house, you’ve been making an effort to assert yourself. Good to know it’s paying off. Plus, Rose wants to hear you admit it.

"Ow. Must be excruciating, what with the canine sensibilities."

"It doesn't have extra pain endings, just extra taste buds," you retort, though you're resisting the temptation to air out the wound by panting. "Your area of specialty is the human brain, miss Lalonde."

"There's an unfortunate dearth of literature regarding the neurology of homo canis deus, yes. You're one of a kind, miss Harley."

It’s impossible to suss out what Rose means from what she says. She could just be poking at you for her own entertainment, or she could be flirting with you. Sometimes she does that without even realizing. She's incorrigible, and plausibly deniable, hiding a little smile behind her teacup and only giving more of herself away in the process. You never even hear her sip. A gentle sheen of sweat threatens to ruin her makeup. You, a tropical islander, have never had any trouble with the conscientiously harmless atmosphere of Earth C. Rose grew up in New York, which she has described as "a warmth-void which even decadent America’s overabundance of ignition engines never manages to heat up". That was back when you communicated online, when it all seemed so much less confusing. Rose’s greatest trick is her speaking sagacity, giftwrapping her dialogue in a multiverse of threads for you to follow, and the conversation keeps going for hours, like you’re catching up with a childhood friend, which you are, except she snips the thread and you’re left with no idea how you got here or where you were trying to arrive. And that’s without getting started on her nebulous relationship status with Kanaya, which you won’t broach, because if Rose wants something with you, surely the onus is on her. As her secrets grow, you shrink.

But that’s you wanting back that past where Rose would bowl you over with torrents of purple prose and then ignore you for days, and you would bite your tongue because you didn’t want to be the creepy girl who dreamt of her friends in the clouds. In the flesh, though, she’s the one with the taut shoulders and the habit of tapping a thumb against her thigh under the table. You can think of exactly one way to coax out the meaning of Rose’s flush. You turn on the fan, and you flirt back.

“You could pioneer the subject, doctor Lalonde!”

Rose’s eyes flit to your fangs. Your grin widens. You start to forget you were mad at all. And that alarms you, because you’d promised yourself you’d work on externalizing that anger a little more, to stop collapsing it into black holes inside yourself, just because you can contain it all in your sidereal magnanimity. But what was it you had judged Rose guilty of? Being a little insensitive, the way she’s always been. If that makes her comfortable, then it’s sacred. Especially because that might’ve been her first pass at a flirt. She’s tried this before, and her overtures always sound a little too much like a taunt, her head tilting in a feline display of curiosity. You suspect it has something to do with her penchant for women that could kick her ass.

“Do you propose a vivisection?”

“If that’s what you wanna call it.” You raise your eyebrows. Rose’s mind palace may be fortified with enough moats and cannons to put the Prospitian army of your dreams to shame, but it has one glaring weakness: making the first move.

“This tea’s delicious.” Rose rushes to change the subject. You’re not sure whether to jot that down as a victory. You wouldn’t remember to keep track anyway.

“Aw, thanks, but it’s just whatever I could grab from Carapacemart. You should come over when my mint’s all grown!”

“I’ve never been partial to mint tea, but if anyone’s thumb is green enough to sway me, it’s yours. I’m rather surprised you haven’t already grown an orchard to rival the city park.”

“Yeah, I miss the plants I left over at Dave and Karkat’s. They send me weekly pictures, and they swear up and down they water them, but without fertilizer and a little love-talk, you know...” Your bougainvillea had just begun to grow over their decrepit outer wall before you moved out. To try to figure out if you could still live on your own, or if you’d sacrificed even that at the altar of fraught dalliances. To ‘work on yourself’, instead of the bougainvillea, which was going to be so beautiful until it wilted. But your new, lonesome place is in perfect order, when it’s not haunted by the ghost of yesterday’s party.

“I always did fear my dear sweet brother would stumble libido-first into a relationship with a windbag as impractical and navelgazing as him. They were very lucky to have you, for as little as that lasted. Not that I think you ought to go back.”

You both pause to take a simultaneous sip of your tea. Before you met Rose, you thought she’d be a precociously refined young lady, raised pinkies and perfect makeup. In reality, she can keep up that mask for maybe three minutes before sprawling catlike on every seat of someone else’s couch. This way, you can appreciate her moments of true calm, like when she closes her eyes and sips - actually sips - her tea.

You put your cup down on your coaster, exhale a gentle orange tang, and blurt out: “What’s it like to date a girl?”

It’s Rose’s turn to raise her eyebrows. “Lesbianism, for me, is a rather... ontological question. I’ve never dated a man, nor will I be caught dead anywhere in paradox space doing so. As far as points of comparison go, I have zilch.”

“Oh.”

“But. But I can tell you that the most consistent source of joy for me, and I’ve experienced, through my Seersight, a multiplicity of touch and feeling and action beyond the ken of even most deific understanding, is the ritual of courtship between another woman and me. The fluttering of eyelashes hidden by a turn of the face, the expert proportions of vinegar and honey, the clash of rapier wit. Or the women who wield their interest in you with the determinant force of a nuclear blast. The most heartrending have mastered both of these approaches in tandem. I can also tell you that you’d be a hot item, should you choose to publicize your stock in the sapphic market.”

“I’ve been with girls! I just figure it’s different to dating them.”

Because you never felt any of that from either of the boys you dated at the same time. Only a sort of homely lukewarmth when you’d huddle under the covers to marathon cooking shows. It was all too little heat to fill your heart the size of Space. Rose makes a woman’s whisper sound like a solar flare, the snap of their fingers a supernova. When you needed alone time and everyone in the house was too noisy and obstinate, you would fly out the window, growing as you went, until you had surpassed the size of the universe, infinity plus one. You would hold the Frog you gave your tenderest years in the service of, your friends and enemies and your new home planet all invisible specks in the infinity bound to its belly. You would stroke an emerald-polished nail over the empyrean spirals whose light would take billennia to reach Earth C, and you entertained yourself with the idea of erasing them. An act undertaken all for yourself. Your planet’s astronomers would never stand a chance. Nowadays, meditation does the trick.

Rose rests her chin on her hand. Her nails are painted a doleful black, and trimmed short. The corners of her iris catch sunlight in a tangerine gleam. That’s a bombshell of information you just dropped on her. She has a way of fixing her object of interest with an oracular gaze, and watching placidly as their secrets pour out all on their own. In Rose Lalonde’s world, considering an action is the same as being consumed with a desire to perform it.

“It’s never too late to start. Especially with our divine lifespans. Lesbians have something of a weak streak for older women.”

“Lesbians, or you?”, you fire.

“When did you become an authority on linguistic psychology?”

“Learned from the best.”

And you wink, to keep her off-balance. You don’t want to give her the satisfaction of prying the truth out of you and walking off again, leaving you with your heart in your throat and a trove of unanswered questions. Even if you’re not sure what it is you’re trying to hide anymore. You’re even less sure what it is she’s here for, if not to help pick up the streamers which have remained undisturbed since your arrival.

“You know, before we met, I didn’t think you’d actually wink as you did over text. In fact, I didn’t think anyone did that outside of tweenage romantic dramas.”

“That’s funny! I was just thinking you’re as long-winded in real life as you are online.”

“Graciously accepted.”

“You’re welcome.”

“How do you even do it? I’m aware of the facial muscles involved, but there’s an abyss of difference between that and conveying smoothness.”

“Aww, Rose. You just have to be natural about it.”

“It happens that my ‘natural’ falls on the... severe side.”

“Mhm! You don’t dance even at your own birthday party, seriously, loosen up a little. I’ve been wanting to give dance lessons, you should come. Lots of ladies in spandex for you.”

“As opposed to you, who remains a trenchant heterosexual?”

“Nuh uh, I told you, I’ve been with girls. Don’t worry too much about it, though. There’s gotta be lots of girls who love the resting bitch face act.”

“You’d be surprised. I’ve been in something of a ditch.”

You don’t take your eyes off Rose as you gulp your tea down to the middle mark. So that’s what’s on her mind. But she doesn’t say more, which is very unlike her. Rose may be guarded, but once you get to the center of what’s bothering her, she’ll start yammering about it and not stop till all the lights in the sky go out. This time, though - this time she sips her tea and pays the floor a quiet glance. Her shoulders stoop.

“We’ve not made one iota of progress with the cleaning.”

“It’s alright. We haven’t talked in forever.”

“Mm. We don’t do that nearly enough.” She opens her mouth, as if to say something, and catches herself. The effect is downright adorable. Not many people have the privilege of watching Rose correct herself. “I was going to ask how long we’ve known each other now, but it’s a rote question. We’ve never not known each other. Sans that three-year gap on the ships, we’ve always been close.”

“Yeah.” Yeah, sans that three-year gap where Rose met the love of her life, that three-year gap of bored desolation, toiling away in the Land of Frost and Frogs you kept buried in your back pocket because it was better than confronting Davepeta about what they fuck they wanted with you. Those three years where nothing could’ve possibly changed your relationship with Rose. “Feels like we didn’t meet much during the Game, either.”

“Our experiences were more similar than they might appear, though.”

“How’s that?”

“I recall being confronted on the meteor by a wild and fanged woman, crackling with the primal maelstrom of a matter before matter, mind focused towards the singular purpose of ending our adventure.”

“Oh.” Your friends looked so small. Little ants on the meteor. You could’ve stomped them out of existence, if you hadn’t gotten caught up lording over them. Your bite has always been worse than your bark. Rose, specifically, you mocked for preening her intelligence, and asked how she’d fare if you shrunk her brain to the size of a peanut - but, really, you’d rather eat it. She retorted something stupid about prion disease, and you didn’t bother with a reply, because the Green Sun burned at your neck and your fingers twitched electric. You shrink into your seat a little. You could still do both of those things. In the interim after achieving Godhood but before being mind-controlled, you never thought about the dizzying immensity of your powers, how your friends would not stand a chance if you chose to clap your hands and fold them in half like paper-mache. And you fear it’s stuck with you. Sometimes, when someone’s into the third leg of an hour-long feelings marathon and you’ve gotten no word out of your own, you catch yourself thinking about how deeply you know them and how shallow their perception of you is. How you could rip them to sobbing chunks in ten words or less.

“You may recall I went through something similar.”

You do remember Rose, the color of a corpse, stomping down Jack’s lair. You don’t remember her threatening her friends with a slow and lurid death. “You looked pretty scary.”

“Right back at you.”

“But I don’t think it was the same at all.”

“Well, what did it feel like for you?”

Your ears perk up, and flatten against your skull. You’re not sure how to revisit this. You told her you’d kill her, shouldn’t she know what you felt like? But you don’t detect even a hint of her playfully acrid tone. Her smug smile is gone. She’s knit her brow, the way it furrows without her knowledge, when she sinks deep into a thought that requires her full concentration. If possession was anything for her like it was for you, she’s been carrying it alone for too long. You’d do anything to soothe her. And you suspect this is one that won’t be solved by rolling over and letting Rose walk all over you, again. So you raise your chin, meet Rose’s all-consuming gaze head-on, and gather up the months of quiet willpower it’s taken you to stand up for yourself.

“I’ll tell you if you tell me.”

“Sounds fair,” Rose answers, and it all feels so much less tense. Like you’re just old friends who went through a lot together, commiserating. A smidgen of the stress Rose’s shoulders have been carrying since she arrived dissipates at last. You hope this is what standing up for yourself feels like. You don’t do a lot of it. And even with all that psyching up, talking about this is still hard. You hearten yourself with a sip of lukewarm tea and begin:

“I felt angry. Really, really angry, and I don’t think that was the Condesce putting anger in me. I think I carried all that inside me, and all she did was lower some sort of... barrier I’d put there, so I wouldn’t go around biting all my friends. I punched Dirk - did you know I punched Dirk? He’s not weaker than he looks or anything, but I was so, so strong. I took him out in one blow. And that’s also not something the mind control put there, I had always been strong, like I could have waved my hands and poofed you all out of existence. I was just aware of it. It made me so angry that no one knew how much I did for them. Then I stopped caring about that. I just wanted everyone to know how dangerous I was. I wanted you all to be afraid. It’s a good thing I got put to sleep. I don’t think I could’ve gone much longer without doing something drastic. I was tired of waiting. Doing felt good. Anger felt good.”

Rose’s tea has gone cold. She gulps it down in one go.

“It can be Sysiphean, the task of ridding yourself of what you could have done, under different circumstances. You could’ve killed us all, and I could’ve avenged my mother’s killer. I meant to, all along. That’s one thing the woegothic trance never took from me. My fate was clearer than ever. I felt freed of the confusion that had plagued me since we entered the Medium, when I thought I had to smash my constraints to even begin finding myself. Suddenly, all that destruction had come to bear on the tip of my wands. I was unburdened of nicety, even of language. That last part frustrated me, but, deep down, I knew I did not need it. I came across June and convinced her to side with me as little more than a convenient ally. It happens that our rapport allowed me to do so through hand gestures and insistent sleeve tugging.”

She pauses, as she sometimes does during her soliloquies, to catch her breath, or for effect.

“I said that it can border on the impossible to be free of potential outcomes. You could have ground us all to a fine dust. You still can. It can be excruciating, at times, to revisit memories of the Game. My Seersight activates regardless of my will. I see a past where June tries to oppose me. She thinks I’m going to hurt myself, which is true, or maybe that, in my state of possession, I’ve turned plain, unipolar, cinematically-appropriate ‘evil’. I blow a hole in her chest, and move on.”

Under the glint of Light in Rose’s eye, you think you see a pool of the inkiest tar-black, the color of the horrors crawling beyond the edge of your infinite Space. It is gone as soon as she blinks. “I try to process that as one of many worst-case scenarios for me, and those scenarios are only arrived at by treading some very narrow paths. What I am now is an aggregate of the choices I’ve been taking for twenty-five years. I had then, as I do now, a tendency to retreat, to not share what plagues my mind and to act on my impulses alone. Such a life makes one obsessive, and obsession breeds cruelty. So I’m trying to make up for lost time now. I should have talked to you a lot more, Jade.”

Rose’s scowl fades. You appreciate the shape of her face, downright cherubic, heart-shaped and chubby about the cheeks. She must not have noticed how perniciously close her hand on the table has snuck to yours. That’s Rose, trigger-happy with words, shy with touch. Watching you dance all night like she thought you wouldn’t notice the piercing of her gaze trained on you.

“Oh, haha, I wish I’d talked to you more too! It’s not all your fault.”

“You had an excuse though. The narcolepsy. Later, the frankly monumental effort you expended to get our collective asses out of the frying pan, time and again. I was only caught up in my own bullshit. It’s a longstanding ill habit of mine.”

“I can’t stand you when you’re like this.”

You watch the shock go through Rose’s system. She doesn’t deflate, like her brother, or fluff up a racket, like Karkat. No. She takes her chin off her palm and folds her hands in front of her, poising herself for the counterattack.

“Oh?”

“When you get all self-deprecating! You don’t even fish for compliments, you just want us to look at you and go ooh, look, Rose is all wounded again, let’s leave her to stew in her misery. You just told me you’re here to make up for lost time. Well, you don’t get to walk it back, not in my house. Come on. Out with it.”

The wall doesn’t quite fall, not yet. But she does allow herself a deep, obvious breath. “I don’t even know where to start. Can you believe that, even between us, there would still be words tantamount to a confessional?”

You can. “You know me. I won’t judge you. Jade Harley, biggest ears on Earth C, for your listening pleasure.”

“Would that every therapist had your ears.”

“You can trust me more than a therapist. I won’t tell if you killed someone!”

“That would be so much easier. I’d hide the body and be done with it.”

“Rose!”

“If I’d spoken to you more, I’d have confessed my crush on you.”

You reel. Your hand on the table jerks away. Rose notices, and you immediately regret it. Rose had a crush on you? Rose Lalonde, who wouldn’t speak to you? Rose, the intimidating creative genius, the only person you’ve ever thought out of your league? The woman sitting across the table from you, looking so terrifically good even with her makeup melting off her face?

“I believe that’s what was holding me back from speaking to you. Now that that’s out in the air, I hope our relationship, which I so cherish, can continue untainted.”

Of course Rose had a crush on you. You were the first girl she tested the limits of, figuring out how much she could talk over you and still have you clinging to her waist, lovestruck puppy that you are. Rose likes strong women, Rose likes older women, but more than anything else, Rose likes doormats. She never told you she liked you, so it never mattered that you liked her back. She’s right. You can’t live in the past.

“Yeah. Mhm. You can come over for tea anytime, just sit around and drink tea and talk about nothing.”

“Jade?”

“What’s up, birthday girl?”

“My birthday was yesterday. You were there.”

“Yeah, I always am, right?”

“What is it, Jade?”

The hairs on your tail bristle up. You will them back down. “Honestly, Rose, you’re so smart, I’m surprised you don’t get it. You had a crush on me and you don’t anymore. I’m going to be a little sad about it for a while, and then I’m going to get over it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a house to clean up.”

You uncross your legs and swing off the chair with a little more force than you’d like. Your tea sits half-finished on the table. You can’t bring yourself to care. You wish you had a little more poise in these situations. It’s so much easier to be the initiator. At least then they can let you down when you expect them to. This is the first time anyone has admitted interest in you first, only to tell you that that interest is long gone. You grab a second bag off the counter and begin mindlessly stuffing balloon remnants into it.

“I never said I’m over the crush.”

You stop. Your nails dig through the bag’s cheap plastic. You force yourself to face Rose. “‘Crush’ is a schoolyard word,” she meanders. She is as nervous as you are. It is even entirely possible that she means it. “You’re no passing meteorite, Jade. I know you, I like to think, better than anyone you’ve spent a night in bed with. I know that you are possessed of a prodigious intellect you rarely boast of - a feat of willpower I wish I was capable of. I know that you possess a terrifying degree of empathy. I know that your greatest weapon is your infallible kindness, but your fangs are no paltry matter, either. I know that you are capable of feats the rest of us could not dream of executing, have been capable since far before the Game, and that you dance through the world you’ve created like it is made of so much glass, and somehow, you manage to stay graceful through it all. And I find you hypnotic to watch.”

Rose says exactly what you want to hear. Inexorably, the instinct to flirt back rises. She’s already blushing. Flirting would put you in the dominant position. You’d take the reins and let Rose take you into the world of grape chapstick you tried not to dream of during your loneliest nights. Out comes the furious loneliness barking and frothing in the cage of memories, in that three-year pit you try never to think about anymore.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I’m telling you now.”

“You went and nearly got married to Kanaya instead, and all this time you had a crush on me. What does a crush matter if you do nothing about it?”

“Kanaya and I have been on a... break. We’ve been together since the very instant I met another woman my age in the flesh. My love can be suffocating, for both my object of affection and I. I wish to know everything there is to know about them, and they scramble to fill my perception. It makes me tunnel-visioned, but, more importantly, I think I was limiting her.”

And, just like that, the conversation is about someone else. You’ve been squatting next to the bag for too long. You pull yourself to your full height, and then hunch over a little. Rose is already nearly a foot smaller than you; sitting, she’s diminute. You don’t mean to appear intimidating. You’re not sure you can help it. Rose’s arms twitch, like she means to cross them, then thinks better of it.

“I won't be your rebound, Rose.”

“I don’t want you to be.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I was scared that you’d reject me. I’ve always found you a little bit scary.”

Your response comes out in a chuckle, more bitter than you intend it to. “Same reason I never told you, then.”

“You had a crush on me, too?”, Rose goggles, and this time, your laugh is sincere.

“For a genius, you can be such a dumbass.”

“I resent that. And I’d be careful if I were you. Any clueless interloper would think you’re flirting with me.”

“Maybe I am.” You can’t say you dislike the way Rose looks at you. Has been looking at you this whole time, analyzing your every movement, trying to construct the full and faithful portrait of Jade Harley. She’s craning her head up off her seat, a Goddess insulted by something so pedestrian as height difference, and suddenly you don’t mind making her feel small anymore. “What are you going to do about it? Chicken out again?”

 _Now_ Rose crosses her arms. “If I want to.”

“That doesn’t sound nearly as cool as you think it does.” Most mornings, you’d have gotten in a good workout by now. You’re starting to feel stagnant. So you fluff up your hair and give a pleasant stretch upwards, feeling the sunlight against your face and the meticulous attention of Rose’s eyes on your body. If she had a retort, it’s died on her tongue. You affect a yawn and continue: “Don’t think you’re out of the blue yet. It’s cute and all to have crushes on each other, but I’m supposed to be taking time for myself. And you still have to convince me I’m not your rebound.”

“I already delivered a most lyrical exegesis on your virtues. Even a writer of my caliber has her limits.”

“Just tell me what you want with me.”

She titubates. “I don’t know.”

“Then you’re not getting any of me.”

“I just don’t know how long this ‘break’ with Kanaya will last, assuming it is an ending thing. And you don’t deserve to be relegated to second fiddle.” Your heart skips a beat, in a way that you can’t quite tell if it’s good or bad. Who knew that being cared for was so difficult? “Relationships depend on two people, you said it yourself. If I can’t figure it out, we can work backwards from you.”

She’s dodging the question with one of her own, and you’re falling for it, like an eager dog to the motion of a thrown baseball. “I wouldn’t mind dating you.”

“You wouldn’t mind dating the most soporiferous pair of streaming service addicts on Earth C again if they got on one knee and asked pretty please. That is not the same as wanting to.”

“You don’t know anything about me.” Your response comes out as a growl, low and throaty. The corner of Rose’s smile quivers.

“I disagree, but you’re welcome to try and enlighten me.”

“Try this on for size: I’m capable of saying no. So convince me.”

You give Rose some of her own medicine, paralyzing her with a glare. She fumbles with her response, bright red and panicking like you’ve never seen her before. When she blushes like this, it spreads all the way to her ears. “I want to see what we could’ve done. No, what we could do, now. I want to try being with you, for a while.”

You chew on her words. It’s not a definitive response. But, last time you crafted yourself an answer, you ended up a phone charm attached to someone else’s relationship. That’s always been you, shackled to tiny and sad hearts, or to the illusion of freedom in loneliness. You think, you hope, you’re ready to run free. As you approach Rose, her blush unfurls almost down to her neckline, warmth spreading into the shadowy dip of her clavicle. Her neck must be so sensitive. You test this theory by running your hand up Rose’s neck, not just your fingertips but the edge of your claws too. Sure enough, her eyes grow wide. She’s been clenching her jaw. It relaxes as you trace tiny circles beneath it. Her head tilts askew. She’s fighting the temptation to flutter her eyelids shut and rest against your palm. You hook the fingers of your other hand around her shirt and tug her to stand, using scarcely any force. It’s her own eagerness propelling her. She looks so good like this, desperately scrabbling onto the last shreds of her poise and finding your waist to grab instead. She inhales and exhales, runs her thumbs towards the center of your core, where she won’t yet dare put her hands. Your shirt is thin. It’s hot outside. You taste chalky lipstick, first. Then, when she opens her mouth for you, the unmistakable flavor of bergamot. She tries to breathe and you press your hand to the back of her head, freezing her for one more second. She gasps. No vocalizations, not yet. You slide your legs closer to hers, your mouth towards her ear. She’s not wearing perfume. You think you like her better this way, but that hypothesis is up for repeat testing. “Feeling enlightened yet?”

“More than before.” Rose is always voice acting, at least a little. She can belt an incredible top F, the kind that sends you reeling and covering your dog ears. When speaking, she opts for the opposite, a kittenish singsong to decorate her constant irony. This time, her breathy purr is involuntary, quivering with bassy crackles. You press your lips against the underside of her chin, feeling the rumble of her throat. You’ve never tried using your Witch powers to make yourself smaller, but if you started anywhere, it’d be here, nestled against the creases of Rose’s intonation.

“Keep talking. I like the sound of your voice.” Your exhale sends goosebumps up your lover’s neck. You giggle in delight. 

“I thought I was... long-winded?”

“You’re hot when you’re like this.” You find your way back up Rose’s neck, through her cheeks and meeting her lips, tracking kisses all the way, wishing you were wearing lipstick so you could map out the vulnerabilities on Rose’s guard. “Messed up.” You muffle her protest with a kiss, sliding your hand off her shirt and to her thighs. With one tug, you obliterate what little space was between her hips and yours, and she wraps a leg around you without thinking. You don’t know how long she wants you for. You could have her like this forever, uncontrolled and needy. It makes you hungry, makes you want to eat all of her right now and be sated for eternity. The fissure in your heart already knows you can’t. But you’ll try anyway.

The look Rose gives you when you both come up for air is one of pure, unguarded fascination. Her nostrils flare. She mumbles: “I wish I was wearing something nicer. I want - I would’ve wanted you to rip it off me.”

“You’ve been fantasizing about this.” You lick your lips wolfishly, just to make sure she knows how delicious you find that. She tilts her chin up and away, the way she does when something’s lost her interest, but her hands sneaking towards your abdomen tell another story. “Tell me about it.”

You poke Rose’s nose before she can answer, and her face scrunches up in annoyance. You wonder how many other people, if any, have seen her in such a complete state of exposure. “Tell me what you want me to do to you.” Tell Jade Harley of all the ways she could love you, Rose Lalonde, and she will make them come true. She is everything your prose can dream of, and more. She will fashion you rings out of neutron stars. She will immolate planets to write your name in the night sky. She will gather the threads of divinity holding matter together and crush them to a fine powder, that you may wear it on the lips you kiss her with.

Rose hesitates to get her bearings. You’re not making it any easier for her, holding her chin and looking into her eyes. They’re ablaze but mellow, a hearth the color of caramel. “I want you to shove me against the wall. And bite me until I bleed. I want you to make your strength known, the way you rarely do.”

“That’s it?” You grin the widest you have all day, making sure she sees every one of your keen teeth. Something like a whimper begins forming on the back of her throat, but she clamps down on it.

“Well, most of all, I want you to be spontaneous about it. I’ll tell you if you do something I don’t like.”

“Sure.” You’re having a hard time verbalizing just how much you like this idea. Most of your paramours have been intimidated by your strength, your canine features, some combination of both. After a certain level of nudity, they become impossible to hide - and, the harder you try to conceal your ravenous self, the more aware of her you become, the more she gnashes against the bars of her enclosure. Few give you full reign to indulge your cravings. And none look as good with their composure shattered as Rose does. A thought occurs to you as you grip her shoulders. “Can I call you kitten?”

Her breath catches in her throat. You see it, etched in the shape of her mouth, the instinctive ‘please’, captured just in time by her pride. “I prefer to think of myself as a panther.”

You shove Rose towards the wall, one hand behind her skull to prevent it from banging. With the same momentum, you press your body flush against hers, relishing in the tremble of arousal that runs from the base of her spine to the nape of her neck. She squirms, and you keep her snug against the wall without tensing too much. Stay relaxed, so she can feel the fullness of the strength coiled in your arms, how little effort it takes you to overpower her. What was it she called this - _the clash of rapier wit_? But it feels as if this is what she’s been wanting all along, a foil who can disarm her in three swift moves, so she doesn’t have to stay firm in her defensive posture anymore. Better yet: a huntress. “You move like a prey animal.”

That is all it takes to rob Rose Lalonde of her coherence. She goes quiet and still as you aim your fangs at the meeting of her trapezius and scalene muscles, because she knows tightening up will only make it less enjoyable. You wait there, lavishing in the sound of Rose’s racing heart. “Bite me,” she tries to command you.

“Say please,” you counter, which is not something you tell everyone. Only Rose, because you know she wants nothing more than to cede control.

“ _Please_ bite me.”

“I smell a whiff of sarcasm.”

“Do you plan to keep me like this all night?”

“Only if you can’t shut up.”

“Jade, please bite me.” Her hands find their way up your back, grip it in anticipation, and that is all your willpower can take. Your fangs sink into her neck, digging out the whimpers Rose had been keeping hidden all this time. You don’t draw blood, at first, only press to what you consider reasonable, knowing well the damage your sharp fangs can inflict. Knowing well how badly she wants it. _Harder_. You increase the pressure just a bit. You want to hear her say it again and again. Her blunt nails scratch a futile assault against your back. _Harder_. You press your knee between her legs, forcing them open. _Harder, please_. You break skin. The tempting taste of iron drips onto your tongue. Rose surrenders her bodyweight to you. You hold her up and gently pry your fangs off her neck. It’s this that draws the loudest moan, the slow release of pain into the bliss of rushing adrenaline.

“Good kitten.” You kiss the corner of her mouth, then the center, and pull away to admire your handiwork. Rose is a vision in crimson. Sunlight wraps around her shoulders like a mantle, bloody highlights on her neck. Her eyelashes flutter with exhaustion and arousal. Her mouth hangs open, painted the color of her own blood. Even thoroughly wrecked, Rose is divine. You press a kiss to her forehead, staining it with the last of the blood, and titter: “You have a lot of pain resistance.”

“It’s called masochism”, she mumbles as she shoves her face into your chest. Blood seeps into her white shirt, ruining it permanently. You doubt she minds.

“We should get you cleaned up.”

“Do we have to?”, Rose whines.

“Yeah, it can get infected.”

“Mmm.” Rose wants to say more, but almost slips against the plethora of streamers on the floor. You catch her by the arms, and she steadies herself by grabbing on to your back.

“C’mon. We can move to the bedroom while we’re at it.”

**Author's Note:**

> THEY FUCK IN THE NEXT ONE I PROMISE.


End file.
